Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Geoffrey Chadsey's Gay Electric Works


Geoffrey has a great show aptly titled "Shift, Return"up at Electric Works in San Francisco thru Feb. 12th. Popped into the opening last Friday and was pleasantly pleased and disturbed by his works. They are both paintings and drawings, using watercolor pencils on frosted mylar, then painting or smearing some areas. The images are large in scale and the mylar gives them a luminous quality that suggests floating. He is obviously practiced and adept at drawing and sketching, the pieces have wonderful geometrical lines - shaping the bodies and  enhancing the gestures of the posers.
The subject matter is gay based with lots of trans-gender imagery and transformations, from one sex to another and from human to beast. Strong, emotive, sexual and in-your-face art, just fantastic. A ride on the emotional roller coaster of identity that confuses and torments some gay lovers. A few pieces were a little too blatant in their statements, a more subtle suggestion of genitalia would have still done the trick for me. (If you don't want to see any genitals, this may not be a show for you.) However, this is a great solo with moving portraits, compassionate humanity and strong imagery, very worth making the trip to see.





For all the art, ( better photos and un-cropped), go here.